“The controversial and ineffective Kyoto Protocol’s first stage comes to an end today, leaving the world with 58 per cent more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the five per cent reduction its signatories sought.

From the beginning, the treaty that was adopted in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, was problematic.

To reduce Greenhouse emissions: ditch the Kyoto protocol

Without Kyoto the US reduced emissions | Graph: Forbes

The big success story in reducing emissions has nothing to do with nanny-state hope-n-change regulation. The US reduced its emissions by 4% in a single year largely because they shifted from coal to gas.

“As a result of increasing use of gas to make electricity, the market share of coal has declined from 48% in 2008 to 43% in 2011 and likely 37% in 2012. Natural gas will capture approximately 30% of electric generation market share this year, sharply up from 12% in 1990 and 16% in 2000.”

The U.S. achieved approximately 70% of the CO2 emissions reductions targeted under Kyoto (as compared to the 1998 EIA CO2 forecast). [Forbes]

On a per capita basis, it’s been 50 years since the US produced such low emissions

The reduction is even more impressive when one considers that 57 million additional energy consumers were added to the U.S. population over the past two decades. Indeed, U.S. carbon emissions have dropped about 20 percent per capita, and are now at their lowest level since Dwight D. Eisenhower left the White House in 1961.

To reduce CO2, get fracking

Bjorn Lomborg explains why governments should not set up un-free markets, but they might achieve something by investing in energy innovation (as they did over the last 30 years with Fracking).

“It is tempting to believe that renewable energy sources are responsible for emissions reductions, but the numbers clearly say otherwise. Accounting for a reduction of 50 Mt of CO2 per year, America’s 30,000 wind turbines reduce emissions by just one-10th the amount that natural gas does. Biofuels reduce emissions by only 10 megatons, and solar panels by a paltry three megatons.

This flies in the face of conventional thinking, which continues to claim that mandating carbon reductions—through cap-and-trade or a carbon tax—is the only way to combat climate change.

But, based on Europe’s experience, such policies are precisely the wrong way to address global warming. Since 1990, the EU has heavily subsidized solar and wind energy at a cost of more than $20 billion annually. Yet its per capita CO2 emissions have fallen by less than half of the reduction achieved in the U.S.—even in percentage terms, the U.S. is now doing better.

Because of broad European skepticism about fracking, there is no gas miracle in the EU, while the abundance of heavily subsidized renewables has caused overachievement of the CO2 target. Along with the closure of German nuclear power stations, this has led, ironically, to a resurgence of coal.

Well-meaning U.S. politicians have likewise shown how not to tackle global warming with subsidies and tax breaks. The relatively small reduction in emissions achieved through wind power costs more than $3.3 billion annually, and far smaller reductions from ethanol (biofuels) and solar panels cost at least $8.5 and $3 billion annually.

Estimates suggest that using carbon taxes to achieve a further 330-megaton CO2 reduction in the EU would cost $250 billion per year. Meanwhile, the fracking bonanza in the U.S. not only delivers a much greater reduction for free, but also creates long-term social benefits through lower energy costs.”

Hows that Kyoto agreement “success” worked out for the EU?

The EU has spent something like 100 billion Euro on emissions reductions and they claim a reduction in EU emissions occurred thanks to that. But anyone can see in the graph that the trading scheme was not the cause. There have been two big falls in EU emissions between 1990 – 2012. One occurred long before the Kyoto agreement with the collapse of Communism in the early 1990′s. The second was in 2008 with the GFC. The US falls correlate with shale gas, not renewables, and not with economic collapse.

The Breakthrough Institute added up the numbers in Dec 2010, pointing out the “trick” the EU uses with the 1990 start year, and the devastating results of big-government action:

In Part One of this series, we documented how Germany and the UK rigged Kyoto to start in 1990 instead of 2005, when the treaty went into effect, so that it could count entirely unrelated reductions made in the early 1990s. The reality, however, is that emission reductions of the EU-15 stand 6.2 percentage points short of its 8 percent target, despite the fact that the European Environmental Agency counts highly questionable carbon offsets and Russian ‘hot air’ to claim something closer to the opposite.But if Europe did not reduce its emissions, then what happened to the €100 billion it spent on its much-touted Emissions Trading Scheme? The answer, we show in this second article, is fraud, rent-seeking, price volatility, abuse, and inefficiency. Worst of all, the ETS threatens to trap Europe into a high-carbon energy infrastructure for decades to come…

The EU ETS may have reduced emissions by as much as …0.3%!

EU emissions did not decline, but actually rose by 1.9 percent during the first three years of the ETS, according to the Institute for Energy Research and figures from the European Commission. The UK economy, for example, actually recarbonized as renewable energy production fell.

A report by Sandbag, a UK-based climate campaign, concludes that by the end of Phase II of the Scheme in 2012, the ETS will have reduced emissions by a mere 0.3 percent. Worse still, even these minimal reductions will depend on highly questionable CDM credits. Domestically, Sandbag does not expect any abatement until at least 2017.

But the ETS did not just fail to reduce EU emissions — it actually created a perverse incentive to increase them.

The good news for the environment and the worlds poor is that only 15% of the world signed on to pretend to reduce emissions via Kyoto II.

The only achievement of Kyoto I was to remind us that Big-Government fails at nearly everything it sets out to do.

Good news? I wonder if US agriculture (aka crops) production decreases along a similar curve as plant fertiliser is reduced.
CO2 has a much larger positive benefit to crop growth than the minor difference it makes to temperature.

The world will live through whatever the reduction of CO2 output has been. We complain when the alarmists want to try engineering the climate. Should we now turn it around and try to force CO2 production up?

Brooksy is not known for offering facts. He is playing devils advocate. However, he conveniently overlooked the stated fact that over the period an additional 57 million new power consumers were added to the grid. So while there may have been some overall decline in US manufacturing, though not necessarily, there were not only an additional 57 million new power consumers, but also 57 million new consumers of goods and services which are still manufactured in the USA.

What’s interesting is that I read an article this morning that the US steel industry is investing once again in DRI (Direct Reduced Iron) furnaces fired by cheap gas as a result of the shale gas boom. Cheap energy is a massive competitive advantage when it comes to energy intensive manufacturing.

Sure the US primary manufacturing industry has seen decline for some time, but the cheapish gas may reverse that trend in the next few years, or at least slow the decline.

Good point John. As Australia also reduces its energy use, so too will our economy be taken over by our competitors. More cheep energy is what we need! Stop the slowing of our economic growth through stupid energy taxes and drop the carbon dioxide tax.

Probably not as the top 10 declining US industries from 2000-2011 were: Manufactured Home Dealers; Record Stores; Photofinishing; Wired Telecommunications Carriers; Apparel Manufacturing;Newspaper Publishing; DVD Game and Video Rental; Mills; Formal Wear and Costume Rental. There was a drop in manufacturing of about 8% from 1990 to 2000 but from 2000 to 2008 the decline was less than 2%. Also looking at the data for the 2Oth century, the biggest decline in US manufacturing was about 20% from 1950 to 1990. So unfortunately for those who are convinced the CO2 tax is the only viable way forward, it looks as if gas, of which Australia has an immense amount in one form or another, may prove to be more effective. The spin from the renewable energy lobby, the ETS lobby, governments and all others who appear rather blinkered will be fascinating to examine. I really would like to see how this decline in US CO2 emissions will impact on these hitherto protected species. Finally I wonder how much Australian CO2 emissions have changed since 2008.

Good point, but also a profound one because the trend of shifting industry to China won’t only apply to the US. And it’s win-win, because China will be happily increasing its industry (and emissions) while the Kyoto signatories will be congratulating themselves on removing some of their industrial problem.

That would be valid as soon as the reduction would be due to energy consume reduction. (Not to mention that such reduction is an overall increase of CO2 production on global scale due to lower efficiency of the chinese power plants – another fail of Kyoto actually.)
Many do realise that keeping an agricultural basis is important, it is dangerously to base your economy only on imported agricultural products. Somehow the same people do not realise that also a manufacturing basis can be at least as important if not more. Just building up a “services” economy, without the underlying agricultural and industrial basis is the sure way to lead ones country to become what was India a couple of decades ago…

The US began to become more energy efficient as a response to the Arab oil embargoes. Although we became more energy efficient we also have had a sizable increase in population since then. We are using more energy now than prior to the embargoes and yet air pollution has dropped dramatically. Some of it is due to cleaner technology and some of it is due to a greater consumption of natural gas. http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10

This is the key point to all of this debate – what goes around comes around. For every ounce of bauxite mined and fried by electricity to make a plane, something dies and sows ounces into the soil to “give back carbon” – we live on the earth, we take from it and when we die or waste we put back. Six on the left, half a dozen ion the right. Yin and Y… (you get it)

I think it was a little more complicated than that. Europe included the former Soviet bloc countries whose belching factories were in dire need of modernization in any event, with consequent large CO2 reductions – aggregated into the entire EC. Because USA generation was already much better than the EC overall, a PERCENTAGE improvement put the USA at a huge disadvantage and cost penalty, compared with the Euro
bloc, to achieve the defined target. That’s why they never signed. The Euros saw Kyoto as a means of gaining economic advantage over the USA; America didn’t take the bait.

Amazing statistics Jo, who would have thought a Kyoto free USA outperformed those Euros by 2 to 1. Once again a reminder to all those who pray at the altar of “government knows best” need to do a rethink. Evil Capitalist USA outdid those morally superior Socialist Europeans.

Need to be careful about Fracking for Natural Gas though. People and farmers don’t like Mining companies drilling under their homes, businesses and farms. Its already happening on East Coast Australia under prime agricultural land and the tactics being employed by the Mining companies and money hungry State governments seem awfully close to what the Thompson’s had to put up with?

Yes, KK, but are water supplies actually at risk? Seems to me it’s often more of an emotional argument of “not on my land”, which is easy for the eco-zealots to exploit. I am from a multi-generational farming background myself, with one uncle still on the land, but the sheer blockheadedness of many of the agrarian socialists (crying poor and expecting handouts in bad seasons) really annoys me.

The thing is that the USA has been fracking extensively for years and the evidence on groundwater contamination and the like should be well and truly in by now. Instead of carrying on like pork chops, egged on by Alan Jones, the farmers and other landholders need to look dispassionately at the evidence. Seems to me that the gas wellheads and associated pipelines are likely to have a very minor ecological footprint compared to wind turbines.

I agree though that the government shouldn’t allow the CSG companies to utilise private property as a lazy way to turn a profit, when there are viable alternatives. There is ample crown land available for gas extraction, and that should be the first option. No point in antagonizing people unnecessarily.

Yes I wrote that in a bit of a hurry, but as illustrated in my other post here I have no reason to trust mining companies.

I am pro mining but want equity in bearing costs for damages caused by that mining and really am not sure that CSG drilling is safe. maybe it is but individuals have the right to equity and decent treatment by government.

It is no mean thing to have your life’s savings held in a property suddenly diminished by mining out of the blue.

To lose twenty years of hard won savings is a crushing blow for any individual.

For me there is a strong parallel between CAGW and the hasty introduction of CSG in cities and existing communities.

I am certain that the hysteria over fracking is based on Green propaganda aimed at stopping all mining long term. The documentary that claimed ground water contamination was another of the style of Al Gore productions and here live cattle export lies. The mining companies do not use chemicals that poison water. That might have taken place in the early days many years ago overseas but that ended a long time ago. Mining conmpanies are subjected to Environmental Pollution Act surveillance like all potential polluters.

Linked are two examples I found of the concern of CSG exploration in NSW after a quick search in Google.

Funny thing is the Greens actually support this because of their overriding obsession with CO2 reduction. My understanding is the law says farmers only own the top soil on their land. Beneath that Mining Companies have very little legal impediments to access private property to drill for CSG. They can’t arrive unannounced, but once they send you the letter off they go and there’s not much you can do about it if you don’t want ugly drilling rigs all over your property and which can become a blight on the landscape. If somebody accessed your private property how would you feel? This is the concern with CSG drilling in NSW.

What is driving this is government thirst for money. Related to Jo’s previous article, the expansion in CSG exploration is due to State government budget pressures. This is why the current Conservative NSW State government is pushing for CSG. They inherited a mess from Labor and are looking for new revenue streams to repair the state government position. All that infrastructure deficit will need to be funded somehow, unfortunately it may be causing collateral damage to farmers land rights and even the environment.

Kinky Keith,
I categorically reject your assertion and I have a lifetime in the mining industry to back it up.
Indeed, the reverse is the case. Successive Governments (mainly on the left) have taken actual mineral deposits and vast areas of prospective land FROM mining companies through mechanisms such as the creation of reserves, parks, world heritage areas, aborignal land rights, creation of military areas, nationalisation, laws of the sea etc.
If all of these restrictions were lifted, I reckon just my past knowledge of untapped reserves could have a good chance to add about a billion $ to our original wealth in 2 years. Add in about 500 other mates with similar knowledge and we have the makings of replacement of our diminishing reserves on which we depend so much.
That guesstimate is net of compensation paid to farmers and aborigines, which was to my knowledge always done with agreement and fairness.
Show me a case to the opposite and I’ll see if I’ve missed any.

Perhaps it changed after I retired – the mining industry structure sure did – but I sleep easy at nights because I can’t remember that we ever ripped off. The attitude was commonly more like “I’m from a mining company and I’d like access to this land; but I have to think as if I was the landowner and must offer proper consideration and compensation.”
As an example, for 6 years I was either VP or President of the NT Chamber of Mines & Energy, travelling monthly or more from down south. It was easily the biggest NT industry. You are quite free to examine the reports I wrote or helped to write from that Office, to see that message coming through again and again. The reports are public. National Library.
You will also see rapacious and vindictive behavior by some governments and in particular, some Ministers. The NT was partly State-like and partly Commonwealth, especially for some minerals. I got so peed off by one Minister’s ignorance that we took him right up the chain to the Full Bench of the High Court. So I guess my words just above relate to Australian governments and ministers. Usually got on fine with the rest of the world.
I also organised some overseas experts to our Board Room in Melbourne for an in-house seminar on Property Rights. Maybe, Kinky & Cohenite, it’s Property Rights that are behind your unhappiness. It is a very complex topic and it has the unfortunate property that it often shows that no completely equitable solution, one that pleases all parties, exists.
But that’s not a problem confined to mining.

KK – please allow correctiuon of a misunderstanding – most of the relevant years we lived in Sydney. I flew to Darwin about monthly for Chamber business. I’ve not lived in Darwin, after first visiting there in 1959. Lived in Melbourne since 1990.
I remember a meeting in the Office of a Federal Labour Minister from NSW whose first name was Laurie, no need to name him… In discussing the fate of a multi million $ project, I suggested to him in a room of about a dozen people “Let’s change the tack. Let me give you an offer that’s too good for you to refuse.” As if rehearsed, everyone left the room except him, my consultant and me, switching off microphones, recorders, cameras as they went. They returned after I failed to produce a metaphorical or actual brown paper bag.

KK, I think that your comments also touch upon the appalling infrastructure deficit generally in Australia, that Rudd gave lip service to in the 2007 election campaign and then did precisely nothing about, for the obvious reason that Labor were hell-bent on p!$$ing (excuse the French) Costello’s accumulated surpluses up against the wall.

I believe that Howard and Costello’s miserliness in relation to modernizing infrastructure was their major failing in government. How many billions of dollars could have been saved, and potential billions more made from efficiency dividends, particularly in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, by ensuring that transport infrastructure updating kept pace with population growth? Not to mention the human cost of traffic gridlock, unsafe highways and so on.

I sincerely hope that the LibNats have learned their lesson and will never again salt away wealth to be squandered at the next change of government. Australia is ostensibly a wealthy industrialized nation, but atypically has a very high population growth rate due to immigration, including unfortunately a fair proportion who go straight onto welfare, to add to our home-grown bludgers. Looks like mining revenue is the only way to keep up with the growth. There is no virtue at all in budget surpluses except to retire government debt, imho.

Ironically for the greenies, who seem incapable of following basic logic, streamlining of transport infrastructure would result in improved air quality in cities and major CO2 mitigation, not that the latter should matter.

And to get back to your complaint KK, I agree that mining profits should not be maximized at the expense of ordinary people. The rail infrastructure you mentioned was clearly necessary to avoid blighting the lives of many Newcastle citizens, and who knows, may have eventually increased profits by getting more coal to port more efficiently. If user pays is deemed acceptable for tollways, it is also fair and reasonable for commercial transport infrastructure. Mining companies could do themselves a favour by demonstrating good corporate behaviour in such ways.

I agree with you that Howard and Costello’s lack of investment in modernizing infrastructure was their major failing in their term of government.

Every Budget night I’d sit back in eager anticipation of how they would announce plans to spend some of that surplus on new productive infrastructure – but every time I was left disappointed.

Knowing the two politicians, I suspect Costello would have wanted to invest in infrastructure but Howard wanted to spend it on tax cuts and other pork barrelling. It was Howard’s way to please the “battlers” – essentially the working classes who’d normally vote for the Labor party.

Now the current Labor government has missed a golden opportunity to spend some of the wasted stimulus outlay in 2009 & 2010 on productive infrastructure. Instead we got expensive Green schemes, a Carbon Tax, increased regulation and a much larger bureaucracy. Let’s hope should the Conservatives win power later this year that they will commit to reversing the trend – It would only be about 20 years too late.

As to how this situation developed an obsession with Debt avoidance and AAA Credit ratings at the expense of Productive Infrastructure was one big reason. Another is other political interests got preference ahead of Infrastructure which was not “sexy” enough.

As a taxpayer, infrastructure is supposed to be a core responsibility of governments. To allow Infrustructure to fall into disrepair or not keep pace with increasing population is therefore a core failure.

I am a bit late coming to this but the gas production on Eastern Australia is largely coal seam methane. Coal seams are in much shallower deposits than shale and that is why their is concern about the water table. Shale gas deposits are much deeper and usually well below any aquifers and so have no impact on water tables or ground water supplies. That being said they have been extracting coal seam gas from the Bowen basin for over 20 years now and, as far as I know, there have been no water problems. I am also unaware, although I am happy to be corrected, of any current water problems anywhere as yet from coal seam gas extraction.

As well as the coal seam gas, Australia has very large quantities of shale gas. The Cooper basin, I believe, sits on a large shale gas reserve. Hopefully all of this carbon madness will soon be a faint memory and we can get back to adult policy making in Australia.

Yes, John *WEATHER* can be a b***h. Meanwhile you are still happy for people to die of preventable diseases, and whole communities live in poverty, so you can have your wind turbine subsidy right? All that suffering is perpetuated for what – a unrealisable search for a 0.000024 degree mitigation in the future temperature in a hundred years.

One more time, John, you made the claim, not I. So backing the claim with data falls on you, not me.

Your churlish, “Do the work yourself Roy,” only serves to make you look like a child. And yes, I know I’m pushing your buttons — probably the wrong ones from your point of view too.

Here’s the way it is: if I made claims the way you do and didn’t back them up; if in fact I refused to back them up; if I just kept on making the kind of holier-than-thou remarks that you do; I would attract the same type of comments you get. That would bother me and I would either quit commenting or raise my standards. I wonder, John, why doesn’t it bother you?

JB, Heat Waves are in the news because Perth seems to have set one, depending on what UHI and station changes might have done. Let’s say it’s genuine, but so what? Must be disappointing to live in a place never known to set a record for anything except not setting records.
For the records. Here are some approximate calculations for heat waves in Sydney and Melbourne over the last 150 years. Data & definitions can be challenged, but without much change to the self-evident story in the graphs.
Climate change heat waves in these 2 cities seem to be getting cooler over the years. You win some, you lose some.http://www.geoffstuff.com/HEAT%20WAVES.pdf

Ok, now we are officially in an election year. Time to do the damage now – I think we need a campaign to remind people of the lies, and to encourage the masses to call their local member and make it clear to them – Support global warming then you vote for someone else.

Something I do prior to each election is to e-mail all the candidates lay out my concerns.

Debt
Global Warming lie
Underfunding Medical Research as a result (cash clearly goes to AGW research)
Freedom of speech and expression
Government overreach into our private lives (ie Nanny State)

I then ask each candidate what they plan to do and my vote goes to the winner. Don’t forget to email all the senators for your state. Then get everyone else you know to do the same. The Pollies on BOTH sides need to know we are angry – and watching them closely!

I’d email my local member with my concerns too, if I thought he’d listen:

Increase taxes so that budgets can be balanced on average:
Remove economic distortions that enrich people for no general benefit (e.g. end the monopoly of pharmacists)
Improve equality of opportunity
Simplify the tax system, freeing up accountants to do more productive work.
Change the legal system so that lawyers are freed up to do more productive work (universal no fault accident insurance is a good start).
Reduce inequality of income.

1. How about the government reduces it’s spending on – Um let’s say useless green initiatives instead, then we can have a balanced budget with No More Tax…

2. Remove the economic distortion of the carbon dioxide Tax and the Mining Tax so that mining companies can employ people and buy stuff from other companies that employ people. Since an ETS is the worst economic distortion maybe they should drop that plan? Yes John, you should ask for that

3. For example we should let the aboriginal people in north western Australia Decide for themselves whether they want a port, right?. The wild rivers legislation should be repealed to provide for opportunity for the local indigenous population. We should have a policy to shift people from places there are no jobs to where there are many, yes, John, ask for that

4. Go for it John, No Tax Increases hidden in there right?

5. No argument there, lets start by repealing s15 of the Antidiscrimination act – that should save a whole bunch of lawsuits from “offended people”. Perhaps we should clean out shonky union officials who commit fraud, and their shonky lawyers. Maybe even the ones that use unionists money to visit prostitutes. Clean them up in one fell swoop – should save a bundle in ongoing corruption and fraud cases, perhaps some of the missing or misused funds can be returned to their rightful owners. Yes, ask for that too.

6. Let’s take John Brookes income and re-distribute it to let’s say – Jo Nova. I know! – how about we have a policy that people should work for a living John? Then we can redistribute huge amounts of that wealth earned by the filthy corporations to people who need it? Maybe even Lewandowski can get a real job! Nah – that’s a stretch too far… Yes, John redistribute away that’s what private sector employment is for

Obviously Mr. Brookes regards himself as one of the “anointed”, and envisions a society in which everyone is equal, except of course a chosen few such as himself who should be far more equal than mere mortals.
I suppose that is typical of the evil bureaucracy in which he is emerged.

From each according to his capabilities, to each according to his needs?

Perhaps you should take a pay cut of 50% John. You’d still be earning much more than a welfare recipient, and can bask in the glow of knowing that your foregone income has contributed to the magnificence of the socialist state

I agree with this. I do not agree with the usual simplistic socialist ideology to equalise incomes (excepting the ‘annointed’) although there does appear to be an unhealthy disparity in the USA. The goal of equalising incomes tends to disregard differences between individuals. Some people work harder or are more talented than others – and they should rewarded so. However, the goal of equalising opportunity is fair.

Being the offspring of a poor working class family should not preclude a person from accessing quality healthcare, education and ultimately the best job and career prospects. It should not matter if you are rich or a pauper, if you work harder or are more naturally talented you should have equal opportunity to succeed no matter what money you have.

But John, the current ALP/Green/Independant government under Julia “No Carbon tax” Gillard and Wayne “Liberal Hysteria” Swan has already introduced or increased over 20 different Taxes since 2010.

If they can’t balance the budget (“No ifs or buts, it WILL happen” – J. Gillard, as late as 1 December 2012) with all that extra cash (remember that wonderful new Resources Super-Profits Tax?), what makes you think they’d be able to do it if they increased/introduced even more taxes?

You’re not even making an effort towards reasonable debate anymore JB. It’s just outright trolling with everything submitted by you now.

Pity you didn’t follow through on your promise to leave if you ever topped 250 down-thumbs on a single comment.

The Greens only approved wind turbines and solar panels as the methods of reducing CO2. Later they added concentrated solar heat methods, once they saw the shining phallus of that Spanish tower.

All of these suffered from trying to collect diffuse energy on the grounds it was free and didn’t release CO2. Methods that generated electricity without CO2 like nuclear and hydroelectricity were attacked, and even financially penalised (as in the UK).

But they only ever thought of “renewable” energy in isolation, not as part of the supply grid. Because wind energy was, and is and will be, expensive they try to make standard methods more expensive with carbon taxes, ETS etc. Worse, the variable “green” sources are given priority of supply, thus disrupting the more conventional sources, and causing them to emit more CO2 per unit generated. To balance the sudden absences of wind supply they have to fall back on Open Cycle Gas Turbines, which generate 700-760 kg. CO2 per MWh. This is less than our 40-50 year old coal plants can do (around 960). Hence some of the reduced emissions in the USA are due the shutting down of older coal plants and replacing their output with that from modern plants.

So wind should really be part of a mixture of wind (0 emitted) at a % set by the Capacity factor, the extra emissions caused by wind’s variability, and emissions from the OCGT units (% roughly 100-wind Capacity factor), giving for comparison approx. approx. 670 kg. per MWh.

Were we to invest in modern coal fired boilers we could achieve a drop to 760, with a further reduction possible down to the 700 achieved with newer trial plants. This may not look that much, but we would get a stable, reliable and lower cost method. And just on black coal stations a reduction in emissions of 8.3%. If we were to replace all our coal fired stations with an equivalent amount of wind turbine capacity, the BEST we could hope for would be 5%.

Switching to natural or coal seam gas and using Closed Cycle Gas Turbines would give an even higher reduction in emissions, but at higher cost, so it is more suited as a minor peak backup component. It is unlikely that the current low price of coal seam gas will continue, even in the USA.

So the option is for reliable cheaper electricity with certain emission reductions, or expensive, unreliable wind with higher electricity prices. Want to guess what will win out in the end?

A possible off topic, but what are the thoughts on tri generation? There are plans afoot in Sydney CBD to use trigeneration to overcome brownouts and grid failures at peak load ahead of any efforts to improve energy consumption efficiency…

Trigeneration is very effective, I support it’s use on the basis that it maximises energy extraction from the fuel, and is very cost effective. While I can’t bring myself to believe in global warming fairy tales ( where a loop gain of 0.95 is blithely accepted as being physically possible ). I do support technological improvement where it makes sense, and trigeneration is one of the few that makes sense.

Yes, but the end stage is heat. Fine if you want to warm something e.g. houses, but not that much use in Australia. Great in northern Europe, Russia, Canada etc. where it is cooler than 20C for lengthy times. With the current “Global Warming” the range of countries is increasing.

Equally the use of diesel generators in skyscrapers to provide grid independent power and use the waste heat for circulating hot water heating is old technology. Achieves 80-85% efficiency. At least if you don’t put generators in the basement and have a tidal surge or other flood.

S.A. has a tri-generation plant running. Don’t have any info, but backend heat is for industrial use.

While the end stage may be heat, Trigeneration is in fact an effective and a feasible direction to proceed, not on a large scale, but on the smaller scale, individual units for large buildings, and here I refer you to the skylines of our cities, large buildings like that.

Trigeneration has three stages, well, naturally. For stage 1, it uses your typical gas fired turbine to drive a generator, a typical Open Cycle Gas Turbine. (OCGT)
Stage 2 uses the superheated exhaust from the gas turbine to boil water to steam to drive a smaller turbine/generator complex to provide added power, your typical Closed Cycle Gas Turbine. (CCGT)
Stage 3 uses the waste steam from stage 2, and while you may think of this as heat, it is heated steam. This is fed to an absorption chiller, which can be used to drive air conditioning, providing heating in Winter and cooling in Summer.

Now, as I mentioned, here you need to think on the smaller scale, not a large OCGT or CCGT plant, but smaller units for individual buildings. The can range in size from 200KW, around the size of a house fridge, (and even smaller units the size of a bar fridge) up to 5MW units the size of around 6 shipping containers in a 3 X 2 block formation (this shipping container example just used to indicate size)

Now, keep in mind that every tall building on a typical skyline needs 2MW+ on a 24/7/365 basis, there is a process where these buildings can be retrofitted, and go off grid. The overall power consumed from the grid if this was done on a large scale would be quite significant, and umm, can you now gain an inkling of an idea of what Base Load power is, when you look at those skylines, virtually all of them places of work, the Commercial Sector of power consumption.

I actually canvassed doing something like this in my original Kyoto series at my site back in 2008, and I then added a further three part series on what is a green building.

That series I have provided the link for below. Part 1 is a general description. Part 2 deals with power consumption, and Part 3 is a ballpark for a large building, for any of you who wish to find out more information.

This actually is a case of finding an answer, if we so desperately need to move away from coal fired power.

That link to the Posts was from almost three years ago, and at the time, and back a year earlier when I first noticed it, I followed some links to sites that detailed Cogen and Trigen, there was one particular site that was selling them, ranging in sizes up to 5MW, and right down to units for residential household applications, and those home ones were around the size of a fridge. Lost the link and can’t find it now, but I feel sure with recent advances, they also have advanced as well.

While there is the possibility of a residential application enabling you to go off grid, you then become an individual CO2 emitter, albeit on a tiny scale, as opposed to being part of the overall grid that is an (overall) large emitter.

Still, from what I remember, those residential units are considerably cheaper than rooftop solar, and even cheaper again than a total off grid solar application, when replacement batteries are taken into account, and this way, you have a dedicated 24/7/365 application that is not reliant on long bright sunny days every day of the year.

I agree with you Tony, but I am surprised at the proviso “if we so desperately need to move away from coal fired power”. It seems most of us including you understand that there is no such desperate need. However, your statement is correct of course if that were the case.
Your comment seems to suggest that this is economically viable using micro GT’s, and certainly there are circumstances where Capstone and Honeywell (now GE) IR and about twenty others have a niche market. An excellent application is cool stores where electrical energy is expensive and gas is relatively cheap (like New Zealand). However, I think if you examine LIFECYCLE costs, the opportune applications are still quite few and far betwixt, even with the current advances in technology. On the other hand, the cost of energy (electricity in particular) has become so distorted with government and NGO meddling that anything is possible.

right from Day One when I first started, the idea was to find replacements ….. if that call to move away from coal fired power got to the stage where Politicians actually started to do what they kept saying they would to win green credence, umm, to win green votes, umm, to look greenly responsible, and actually close them down, something that will not happen, because they now fully understand the political suicide that would lead to.

I KNOW that there is no form of power generation cheaper than coal fired power, excepting of course the existing U.S. fleet of Nuclear electrical power generators, which currently do what coal fired power does, only at a half the price and some even better than that.

Anything at the individual residential household level is enormously more expensive, no matter what it is.

Anything for a Commercial application is enormously more expensive, no matter what it is.

Anything for an Industrial application is enormously more expensive, no matter what it is.

No large scale plant is cheaper than a coal fired one.

There’s nothing (other than Nukes) that can do what large scale coal fired power can do, and nothing can do it cheaper. They do everything they can to make it more expensive, and its still cheaper.

Get in your car, turn the engine on, leave it in neutral and place a house brick on the accelerator. See how long it keeps working.

One of the generators at Stanwell, near where I live here in Rockhampton holds a world electrical power generating record. It was turned on, and run up to speed on the day the plant opened, 3000RPM, and that’s a 400+ ton rotor spinning around at 50 rotations each second. It stayed at that speed, flat out, delivering all its full power for ….. 1,073 DAYS. Almost three years before winding down for scheduled maintenance.

Find me any power generator that can do that.

(Not shouting here) NOTHING CAN COMPETE WITH THAT.

I tried to find something to replace that sort of power. There was nothing, at any level.

Tony,
From left field, just as we fly helcopter Elvis to Australia for water bombing over several weeks of the fire danger period each year, could there not be a fleet of nuclear powered ships/subs roaming the world, to dock at locations needing that hugely expensive peak electrical power for a few weeks each year? I think a large sub outputs about 1 MW(e) in total, not sure what % could be diverted from propulsion once docked. Silly or feasible if you leave out the politics?

One of our customers for wear resistant, harfaced Expeller Press parts in their rendering plant is installing a tri-generation plant with the aid of one million dollars from the Vic State Government. Maybe it will get its CO2 usage below the Carbon Tax threshold by this means:

Wodonga Rendering gets $1 million boost

Tuesday, 04 December 2012
From the Minister for Racing

Minister for Regional Cities Denis Napthine and Member for Benambra Bill Tilley today announced Victorian Coalition Government funding of $1.008 million to help Wodonga Rendering lower energy costs and operate more efficiently.

Speaking at the Wodonga Abattoir today, Dr Napthine said the Coalition Government was pleased to support Wodonga Rendering’s investment in a new $4.123 million tri-generation power plant at the Abattoir.

Along the lines of Geoff’s suggestion, the village at the end of the small harbor near me could be served by a decommissioned Russian sub (the local greenies would bitch less than if it were a US one). Heat to attract tropical fish, tourism, road de-icing, building heat and light, and using beamed microwaves, feed energy to surrounding hillsides. Locals in Faraday Suits could deploy every week to gather collateral-damaged spotted owls and marbled murrelets unfortunate enough to have crossed the beams. Eventually the several generations of hippies living in the underbrush could be taken out of harm’s way by relocating them to heat-shelters in the local park.

The nicest feature, of course, is the potential draw of a permanent edifice to attract anti-nuke protestors – with the rabble rousing season being extended by said heat and heat shelters. Would probably screw up the local Saturday Market, but that would be ok with the greenies too, as they hate tourists and that’s currently one of the big draws. (Anything to keep tourists from actually reaching land, here, would be fine.)

Yes Tony, Unit 4 at Stanwell set the record ten years ago and it still stands. However, there are hundreds of large stream machines that have operated continuously for a year or two. To drive your point even further, Swanbank E also set a record of 267 days, at least for KA26 plants. The difference is that U4 is large steam and SE is large CCGT. Aero derivative peakers would have a tough time eqyualling that. So on the one had we have efficent reliable coal, and on the other useful idiots that think silicon panels and bird blenders backed up by aero-derivative peakers is a good idea. In what universe, as Sheldon would say!

The trouble I have with tri generation is not so much trigen in of itself but rather the wish not to look at the other side of the equation – i.e. improving efficiency of energy consumption in the current systems. For instance we know most desktop PC’s are going away to be replaced by laptops/tablets – big drop in per item power for that, this also means a drop in cooling requirements (less waste heat to get rid off). I’d also suspect a lot of the chillers in the CBD at somewhat ‘dated’ so could be replaced with more efficient versions. The trouble is if one just looks at the supply side, there is a real danger that you end up with too much capacity as newer techs already in the pipeline reduce energy demands.. and thats my worry with the Sydney CBD plans – you cannot consider what to do the supply side without also considering the consumption side and what can be done there..

Nope, risk of overcapacity is NOT a problem right now! Also, history says that when we reduce our consumption through power savings we replace the lost consumption with more gizmos. IE history says that we get more appliances (aircon etc) – so your argument falls over right there…

bobl – okay assuming thats correct, then the case for improving efficiency of energy consumption actually gets more important not less. It just moves the point at which you need to focus on energy efficiency to a different point in time but it does not remove the need to deal with it at some point, therefore why not break the cycle and be more efficient now? Both sides of the equation need to be considered and thats the core issue I have with what is happening in the Sydney CBD.

I’d much rather we would adopt a mindset of addressing some gains in energy efficiency and look at what should be used to fulfill the required supply needs both at the same time.

It is about time the Coalition (opposition party) in Australia added to their commitment to abolish the carbon tax should they win the next election. They need to commit to withdrawing Australia from Kyoto II and of course the ETS trading agreement with the EU. They need to put the CSIRO and all the Australian Research Grant rent seekers on notice that there will be a knife through all their wasteful, unnecessary expenditure and while we are at it, maybe we should privatize the BOM and hold it to some proper independent audit standards.

And the socialist Australian government is anxious to sign a new version, regardless of the lack of interest by most other countries. The local extremists are so keen to please and impress their international comrades and to hand them our borrowed monies, too bad that 1 in every 8 Australians now live in poverty.

The underpinnings of the Kyoto Protocol used benefit-cost analysis to achieve a compromise solution. To achieve is goal it needed ALL of the following assumptions to be true.

1. CO2 causing a massive increase in global warming.
2. For that warming to have massive catastrophic consequences.
3. For economic theory to provide a theoretical solution with benefits ≥ costs.
4. The actual solution matches the theory.
5. There are no unintended consequences of actual policy implementation need to be taken into account.
6. That the Kyoto Protocol was originally estimated at being 97% useless in constraining temperature rises.

Sometimes, unless there is a correct explanation, people can deduce somewhat false conclusions from bland statements.

The John Hangar one above is a case in point here, where he mentions that the CO2 reduction was achieved by a shift from coal fired power to Natural Gas fired power.

So then, let’s look at that with some explanation.

Luckily, I have the most in depth data available for this and I’ve now been using it for nearly 5 years, that data from the huge EIA database from the U.S. and this is data no one else does on the Planet with such up to date accuracy, now with only a 2 Month lead time.

This data has been my Bible for those last 5 years, and while bland statistics are just, well, bland statistics, they mean little to people who cannot understand what they actually mean, so then, let me try and add some context here.

True, there has been a shift from coal fired to gas fired power generation, and people could assume from that that this is in fact driven by this need for a reduction in CO2 emissions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Virtually no new coal fired plants have been constructed for, well, decades really, meaning that existing plants in the whole U.S. fleet were aging. In fact right up to 3 years ago, the AVERAGE age of the whole coal fired power fleet in the U.S. was just on 49 years. Consider that the average life expectancy for any coal fired plant is 50 years, that meant there were a lot of plants way older than that 50 years Max.

That average age has come down now, but only just a little, to around 45 years, and that of itself provides a hint as to the move from coal fired to gas fired. Those older plants were closing down, little ones all across the Country, plants used mainly as (what is referred to as) Spinning Reserve, in other words plants turning and burning but not connected to the grid, until needed.

That can be an easy thing for me to say, but it can in fact be borne out by the data, if you know what to look for, and then understand that, or have it explained to you.

5 years ago in 2008, each one ton of coal burned was generating 1.44MWH.

Now, at the end of 2012, each one ton of coal burned is generating 1.83MWH.

So, they are getting more power from each ton of coal being burned, and that is power being delivered to the grids.

So, with all those older plants being closed down, those remaining ones are still delivering the power they always did, only now there is no Spinning Reserve waiting for when extra power is required.

However, that power formerly provided by those older spinning reserve plants needs to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is now from gas fired plants. Gas fired plants can run up to speed and start delivering power at short notice, and they are specifically designed to do this, but because they are not as robust as those coal fired plants, gas fired plants are designed to operate for shorter periods of time, for when extra power is required, a couple of hours in the morning and 4 to 6 hours in the evening, those traditional never changing Peaking Power time periods.

Now, with no spinning reserve, those gas fired plants are running for longer periods of time, to provide all that power that came from coal fired barely a couple of years ago. That increase in gas fired power delivery has been a huge increase over the last few years. There has not been much in the way of newly constructed gas fired plants in those last few years, well nowhere even close to what the actual power delivery increase covers, so it means that those existing gas fired plants are indeed working longer and harder than they once did.

On a MWH to MWH comparison, gas fired power emits a third of the CO2 that coal fired power does, and that is why, for virtually the same total power delivered to the grids across the U.S. those CO2 emissions have indeed come down over the last 5 years.

Because I capitalise this next sentence does not mean I’m shouting. It’s done for emphasis only.

THOSE COAL FIRED PLANTS ARE NOT CLOSING BECAUSE OF THIS CO2 SCARE.

The ones that are closing are those older plants that have reached the end of their viability.

I mentioned that the average age of a coal fired plant is 50 years.

The U.S. currently has 715 generators older than 50 years, and in fact 37 Plants older than 62 years, the oldest operating coal fired plant being 75 years old, and still supplying power.

On a MWH to MWH comparison, gas fired power emits a third of the CO2 that coal fired power does

This depends on a number of factors, the primary one being the quality of the raw coal being burnt. There are legal restrictions on sulphur oxide emissions, so the sulphur content of the raw coal is critical. The non-carbon segment of coal (ie. the ash content) varies enormously (from a few % to maybe 35%) – low ash coal is generally assigned to export because it raises a higher price, while high ash coal is generally assigned to domestic fuel. High ash coal generates less energy than low ash coal for the same equivalent tonne burnt, so domestic power stations tend to consume the less efficient fuels

Govts contribute to this high/low ash split by examining mining proposals using this criterion and awarding licences based partly on it

@KK

I understand your frustration and fear of CSG drilling, but you are missing a critical input. This is the actual geographical locations of coal deposits suitable for CSG. I suggest you examine the maps publically available (eg. DoP) that delineate this, and consider the impact of encroaching suburbia/farming developments on Govtl abilities to manage this

This is an important issue. I know geological data is not well disseminated throughout the populace but such basic information is readily and freely available. Please take advantage of this fact

Although you say you have not overlooked the actual geology, I’m afraid you seem to have done just that

The Lithgow seams are not suitable for CSG because they contain no methane – the tectonic uplift that caused the mountain range allowed the gas to leak out into the atmosphere, while letting the groundwater in. A rather fluid exchange, one might say !

But in a sense you are right – there is no CSG profit in the Western Coalfield, since there is no actual CSG (some very minor CO2)

Again, I understand your frustration, but maps of compiled geology are not just opinions, they are as factual as homo sapiens knows how to do with current data and as good as any other scientific endeavour:

ps. I used to work for the state government for a while and their public actions rarely mirrored my own views

It seems to me your views on Govt publications have missed the geological point. Whether extracting the methane is sensible depends on the actual geology of the seams and a host of surface considerations. Is it worth the touted drop in CO2 emissions … TonyOz post states that is the very least of reasons

One of my frustrations is the absolute dearth of geological knowledge within the general populace. Imagine my dismay when I realised that most people have no intention of changing that – fair enough, but it hasn’t stopped widespread pontification without knowledge

My ps: I do not work for a mining company, but I have in the past. As a consequence, I have perforce aquired a reasonably in-depth knowledge of mining geology worldwide

As may be coming through in my other comments my main concerns relate to support infrastructure like

rail lines for coal transportation, water security and general compliance with environmental

conditions attached to a particular contract.

Despite your comment I never looked up any geologic maps nor do I have any interest or opinion or
“views on Govt publications”.

Perhaps the main point I was making was that past NSW Government performance in managing business activity and the environment is not brilliant, not by a long shot.

I believe that in a sensible well behaved democracy we should be able to trust the Government and active companies to do the research and protect the public interest; in relation to water security and based on past performance I had serious doubts.

I’m sorry if you took my Lithgow suggestion seriously, I did not mean to cause any concern ; it was chosen simply because it is a long way from major built up areas, apart from Lithgow itself.

I’m sorry you feel let down by the general populace: “One of my frustrations is the absolute dearth

of geological knowledge within the general populace “but I think , again, in a reasonable society that

we should be able to TRUST our government to do the right thing by everybody, not just business or

pressure groups.

I think the fact that we are here discussing Man Made Global Warming is evidence enough that the important decisions made by government need constant scrutiny.

Yes, they can’t be trusted.

Since my original comments a number of people have put me somewhat at ease over the CSG thing but remember :

governments have fouled up in the past and will continue to do so, any belief to the contrary is a little misguided and I totally agree with your comment that “a host of surface considerations” are important. The main one being that there be no drilling in built up urban areas or directly near Geological Structures adjacent to aquifers.

Can I clarify an issue?
The CO2 savings have three aspects.
First, retirement of the oldest and therefore least efficient of the coal-fired power stations.
Second, is that the spinning reserve is moving to gas. Coal-fired power stations have to be kept idling, so you are wasting far more energy when not producing electricity than a gas turbine which fires up quicker.
Third, is that a modern gas-fired power station operating at full load emits about half the CO2 per Mwh as the modern coal-fired power station.

It is the third aspect most people assume is the reason for CO2 emissions, whereas you are saying it is the first and second.

You also say that on average power per tonne of coal burned has improved from 1.44 MWH to 1.83 MWH. Do you know (roughly) how much power a modern coal fired power station generates per tonne of coal? In Britain, the environmentalists are dead set against any building of new coal-fired power stations – James Hansen got arrested protesting against a proposed one a couple of years ago. If there is a leap in efficiency from more modern power stations and quicker start-ups, delaying the introduction of newer coal-fired technology is preventing CO2 savings.

The data I quoted in the earlier Comment was for the whole of U.S. fleet, for 2008 (1.44MW per ton) and end of 2012 (1.83MWH per ton)

I have some existing calculations to work with that show some interest.

Bayswater (circa late 70′s early 80′s) 2.5MWH per ton of coal burned.

Stanwell, (late 90′s) also close to that figure for Bayswater of 2.5MWH per ton.

New USC plants could be around 3 to probably as high as 3.2MWH per ton of coal burned, but I have no definitive data.

Interestingly, exisiting coal fired plants once used to have detailed fact sheets, and when I started around 5 years back now, I could ‘search engine’ any plant and get detailed information. Now I have to even search harder for ANY information at all, and those fact sheets have virtually all disappeared to be replaced by generic informational stuff only, usually warm and fluffy information with virtually no hard data at all, and instead of actual figures, they are now prefaced with the word ‘around’, and any data is aimed more towards environmental concerns (like, gee, we’re good) instead of actual hard numbers.

It’s just so damned obvious what has happened here. Plant bean counters and media relationship people are ‘cleaning’ up the information shown for each site, so there’s nothing that can be used ….. against them, if you see what I mean here.

In some cases, in the U.S. especially, whole plants have just disappeared from the Internet, and now the only information the average person can find is at that Wikipedia site, and we all know how reliable and unbiassed they are.

With respect to CO2 emissions calculations I use, I use the standard average for coal fired power of 2.86 tons of CO2 per ton of coal burned, (and that Wiki site has that standard at 2.94, hey, surprise surprise) For Natural Gas, I also use the standard, which is 122 pounds of CO2 per mcf of gas burned. (Where mcf is one thousand cubic feet of gas)

Using those two standards, lets look then at the totals for MWH of power generated per ton of CO2 emissions, this is for the whole of the U.S. fleet (current figures EOY 2012) for coal fired power and natural gas fired power.

Coal Fired Power: 0.64 MWH per ton of CO2 emitted.

Natural Gas Fired Power: 2.1 MWH per ton of CO2 emitted

Again, keep in mind that this is just an average for whole of fleet, and individual plants would vary, like Bayswater and Stanwell would equate to 0.88MWH per ton of CO2 emitted, and new technology USC coal fired power would be (close to) 1.05MWH per ton of CO2 emitted.

Now, while those figures are indicative, keep in mind here that in much the same manner as whole of fleet figures are lower, that also applies to NG as well as coal fired power, so more recent figures for newer technology gas fired plants would also be higher, so that ratio I use of three to one, and manicbeancounters ratio of two to one would be close to the mark, eg, in that one third to one half region.

Again, be aware that the data shown here can sometimes be pretty dry and boring, and I can only go on the information that is available, and that sometimes needs careful explanation, hence the (sometimes) inordinate length of my Comments here.

But are you in the right ballpark or are you in the ballpark next door or the one in the next suburb.

We have a ballpark for how much we emitt we have a ballpark for how much the ocean takes up we have a ballpark for how much the vegitation takes up and we have a ballpark for how much radiative forcing there is.

A lot of ballparks especially when you are paying $23/tonne for the pleasure.

http://mises.org/daily/5955/The-Seven-Rules-of-Bureaucracy
Rules of Bureaucracy
Rule #1: Maintain the problem at all costs! The problem is the basis of power, perks, privileges, and security.
Rule #2: Use crisis and perceived crisis to increase your power and control.
Rule 2a. Force 11th-hour decisions, threaten the loss of options and opportunities, and limit the opposition’s opportunity to review and critique.
Rule #3: If there are not enough crises, manufacture them, even from nature, where none exist.
Rule #4: Control the flow and release of information while feigning openness.
Rule 4a: Deny, delay, obfuscate, spin, and lie.
Rule #5: Maximize public-relations exposure by creating a cover story that appeals to the universal need to help people.
Rule #6: Create vested support groups by distributing concentrated benefits and/or entitlements to these special interests, while distributing the costs broadly to one’s political opponents.
Rule #7: Demonize the truth tellers who have the temerity to say, “The emperor has no clothes.”

I found it worth to read the whole article through not only the highlights.

Now combine the shaman and thunderstorm act, Guy who tells a credulous community that by chanting and incantation he can make the thunder & lightening move on.
That was Kyoto and is the UN, what is going to happen happens, govt tries to grab the credit.
Gullible folk fall for it, and say, “Look what the govt did for us”.
This Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Scam is a creation of the bureaucracy, at our expense and cost.
Your govt was party to an orchestrated fraud, which constitutes an attack upon your sovereignty, which is treason.
Every member of the civil service swore an oath, all who are party to perpetuating this false alarm are forsworn , by incompetence or malice it matters not.
Want to return the favour?
Lets spread a little fear thro the beast.
Work at convincing politicians, especially the most complicit, that promoting CAGW, in all its forms, is treason.
Not much will happen at first but the pollies are afraid of even rumbles of discontent.
And you offer them a way to escape while throwing the bureaucrats to the mob.
After all as these lying nasties have shown us, fake outrage works on govt.

Peter Costello, former federal treasurer, said last year that the $250 billion of debt (excludes off budget NBN debt) plus interest will take at least 40 years to retire. When Australia repaid the Keating Labor 1996 debt of $96 billion retired by 2006 the total cost with interest was over $170 billion. The $250 billion assuming a low 4% interest cost equals $10 billion a year of interest liability before repaying the debt. The total cost over 40 years will cost us more than $650 billion and this government of fiscal fools intends to borrow another $50 billion this financial year, plus more NBN funding. Add state and local government debt. Australia has low public debt? No way, we will be burdened by Labor borrowing excesses for a very long time and we cannot afford them for another term.

And please consider that the terms of trade since 2007 have been the best ever in our history, far better than in the Howard Coalition years. Despite the higher revenue streams this federal government has borrowed to spend and have wasted billions. They lie about the GFC stimulus, the firewall was mainly major economic reform, zero debt and a $22 billion budget surplus inherited from the Coalition, and the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority the Coalition established in 1998. The first mining boom commenced in 2002 yet the Coalition managed budget surpluses in all but one year (East Timor exercise).

Wait – I know the Kyoto protocol ended on Dec 31st, but what happened to the extension they tried to put on it? What was it, eight years or something? I know that shouldn’t make any difference, but then these guys and gals taking the money and enjoying their jaunts around the world on a regular basis seem to think their word is law. As the Kyoto protocol did not achieve what they wanted, they decided to grant themselves more time – no one had to sign anywhere, or at least it seemed that way to me. They simply extended it to 2020 (or somesuch future date). Please say it isn’t so. As any sort of binding agreement, it ought to be illegal just to change the date of expiry.

I’ve been on holiday and not in as often, so I might have missed something, but I sure hope that attempt got tripped up.

Oh, and a Happy New Year to everyone. I’m expecting 2013 to be a really good year!

14 Dec: Bloomberg/Businessweek: Matthew Carr: Ukraine May Join Russia to Shun Kyoto as Credits Fall
Ukraine may join Russia in shunning the extended Kyoto Protocol after United Nations envoys approved a text the two nations didn’t agree with, according to the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels…
Russia has said it won’t join Kyoto’s extension…
“Ukraine and Belarus are less likely to ratify the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol” because they object to the text, Andrei Marcu, senior adviser to the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, said yesterday in a report on the Doha talks…
For Ukraine, parts of the text seem to oppose other sections, Marcu said…
“The conditions for Ukraine’s commitments are directly contradicted by the approved Kyoto Protocol text,” Marcu said.
John Hay, spokesman for the UNFCCC in Bonn, declined to comment immediately when reached by phone today…
Russia has appealed against the Doha decision, saying the nation’s attempts to speak at the meeting last week were improperly suppressed.
“We are highly disappointed in both the procedural violations and the conduct of business,” Oleg Shamanov, the nation’s chief climate negotiator, said in an interview in Doha as the talks drew to a close. “There will be very serious long- term consequences for the process.”…
Emission Reduction Units for this month rose 27 percent today to 28 euro cents a metric ton on ICE Futures Europe exchange in London at 12:47 p.m. The reached a record low 15 cents in intraday trading on Dec. 12.http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-14/ukraine-may-join-russia-to-shun-kyoto-as-credits-fall

1 Jan: Sun News Canada: Lorrie Goldstein:
As of today, the Kyoto protocol is a zombie treaty.
It’s a corpse that keeps moving, but it’s dead…
But, just like the walking dead, it rose from the grave Tuesday because 195 countries at a UN conference in Doha, Qatar last month agreed to pretend it’s still alive.
They “extended” Kyoto, pending the ratification of a new treaty by 2015, to take effect in 2020.
In other words, they kicked the zombie down the road for a few more years, while agreeing to maintain the fiction among themselves that Kyoto is a “global” emissions treaty, when it actually covers only 15% of global emissions…
Canada withdrew from Kyoto last month, having given its obligatory one-year notice last December…
Even Chretien’s top political aide, Eddie Goldenberg, has since admitted that when the Liberals signed Kyoto, they knew they couldn’t implement its target of cutting our emissions by an average of 6% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.
The proof of that lies in the fact that by the time the Liberals were tossed from power in 2006, Canada’s emissions were 30% above the Kyoto target to which Chretien had agreed.
That meant the new Conservative government would have had to wreck the Canadian economy to achieve Chretien’s unattainable goal.
Harper finally stopped paying lip service to this ridiculous idea a year ago, when Environment Minister Peter Kent announced Canada was withdrawing from Kyoto.
That was the first sensible thing a Canadian government had done on this issue in 13 years…http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2013/01/20130101-143543.html

“As of today, the Kyoto protocol is a zombie treaty.
It’s a corpse that keeps moving, but it’s dead…
But, just like the walking dead, it rose from the grave Tuesday because 195 countries at a UN conference in Doha, Qatar last month agreed to pretend it’s still alive.
They “extended” Kyoto, pending the ratification of a new treaty by 2015, to take effect in 2020.
In other words, they kicked the zombie down the road for a few more years…”

I have a question for the experts out there regarding feed backs, as far as i am aware the IPCC do not mention negative feed backs in any of their reports in other words if CO2 goes up then the temp must follow. JB earlier cited a couple of hot days in Perth as evidence of this theory therefore the only way to reduce the temps is to reduce CO2 levels hence the need for a Kyoto type agreement.

Now i know most warmists will shrug this off as “aw gee shucks thats just weather” or ” all this snow and freezing temps is caused by AGW” and my favorite “This is all just as the models predicted”.

The point is we were told there would be LESS snow and warmer temps due to AGW (no negative feed backs) but that is not the case surely when 65% of the USA and many other parts of the NH is covered in snow this MUST increase the albedo of the planet reflecting more light back into space so if this increased snow is caused by AGW then it must be a negative feed back. Therefore i question the need for Kyoto or any other type of legislative instrument in the first place.

Here are a few more head lines (without links)

Record snowfall in Sault Ste. Marie

Dozens die in Ukraine “cold snap” (83 people)

Dozens die in Poland “cold snap” (60 people)

Coldest December on record prompts state of emergency in Altai

Extreme cold extends into Thailand

Emergency situation over heavy snow in Bulgaria

Russia – Death Toll From Cold Keeps Rising

Mt Baker closed – too much snow and fallen trees !!!!

North India “cold snap” kills 25

Nepal – Cold wave kills 17 in 10 days

Crystal Mountain – Snowfall 150 percent above normal

Numerous Japanese cities set record low temps as freezing temperature persist

Russia’s brutal winter claims 123 lives – So far

Record snowfall in Montreal

Record snowfall in Arkansas

Rochester NY Digs Out After Record Snowfall

Korea – Heavy snowfall sets new record

Record snowfall in Dayton, Ohio

Forget global warming – Alaska headed for an ice age (“In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit”.)

Crakar, I’ll just give my standard reply. While there is overall warming, the geographical distribution of that warming is extremely difficult to predict (other than saying it will be more at the poles). We are changing the weather, and if it gets colder some place, or even lots of places, that is hardly surprising.

You did not answer my question (negative feed backs and the need for a Co2 reducing treaty of sorts) instead you debated the possibility of regional climate change, but still you did respond and i thank you for that.

Crackar your question was “Do we really need a Kyoto agreement?” based upon a list of what you think are notable weather events. JB’s answer is yes. YOu did mention feedbacks earlier in your post, and suggested you may ask a question, but there is no question there. It is tough for JB to answer a question you only thought about asking.

“Rather than critiquing my comment why dont you answer the question”
My point being that the question asked was answered, and you at that stage had not asked any other questions. I see now you have asked three relatively coherent questions (gold star for crackar) so here are my answers:

ii) yes if it was more snow extent and persistance of cover, rather than there just being more depth as a result of snow. I’d be surprised if on a global extent there was anything like a significant increase in the amount of the earth’s surface that has been covered by snow/ice in 2012.
iii) If there was more snow extent to the point that it actually made a difference in albedo, and it was caused by CO2 (not sure that anyone says it is mind you), then yes of course that would be a negative feedback. the exsistence of a single negative feedback “may” but also may not mean there is no need for CO2e emissions reductions.

ii) yes if it was more snow extent and persistance of cover, rather than there just being more depth as a result of snow. I’d be surprised if on a global extent there was anything like a significant increase in the amount of the earth’s surface that has been covered by snow/ice in 2012.

So if the blithering idiot can claim a hot night in Perth to be caused by rising CO2 emissions then i am well within my rights to claim this record snow coverage to be caused by rising CO2 levels as well.

You got it wrong again MattB as you always do and may i add that once again after gobbing off you have failed to respond adequately to the discussion at hand.

I will ask once again the same questions (plus a few more) not to give you an opportunity to answer but to once again fail to answer.

1, List all IPCC negative feed backs to rising CO2 levels

2, Explain how rising CO2 levels can cause a hot night in Perth whilst simultaneously cause record snowpack after all it is GLOBAL warming and not regional warming like the MWP.

3, Explain why we need Kyoto to reduce emissions when nature provides us with a mechanism

4, Explain why we need Kyoto when the USA can reduce emissions as a non signatory and without introducing a tax (no i did not forget even though you conveniently left it out in your response)

5, Explain how rising CO2 levels can cause a hot night in Perth, increase Antarctic ice extent, reduce Arctic ice extent and at the same time produce record snow coverage in the USA.

And please answer the question do not dodge it, do not avoid it with liguistic gymnastics just answer the questions it has been 18 hours now since i asked you these questions and all you have done so far is pick on warthogs even a man of your low stature can do better than that.

1) read the link I gave you dumbass
2) I didn’t say rising CO2 levels have caused a 1 in 10 year snow event in the US. You did.
3) what mechanism? You seem to be suggesting that a 1 in 10 year event, that lasts what a couple of weeks? has a significant impact on the total snow/ice coverage of the goddamn planet averaged over a year? DO you know how many km2 of new snow there is and how long it lasts, say compared to the low arctioc sea ice km2?
4) Because not every nation has access to the gas bonanza currently assisting the USA. The ability to reduce CO2 on the cheap is a great advantage to the USA for sure but it is not an argument against a global effort.
5) The climate is a complex beast.

Yet again I answer all your questions (well the ones that make even the remotest amount of sense) clearly and openly.

You got nothing. who knows AGW may well be a scam of the greatest proportions but you’ll still be texting warhogs for help at the next pub quiz night.

Lets take a step back here MattB and examine the path we have taken to reach this point, i like to do this because we can see how you lot cant stay in topic or should i say wont because you dont wish to be pinned down and have to actually address the issue at hand. This is standard practice for you lot, you go by the old saying that it is hard to hit a moving target.

Firstly JB made the bizzare claim that a hot night or two in Perth confirmed his religious belief in AGW so i thought i would respond with evidence that countered his claim (sorry but comment numbers are not showing for me).

I produced a few links and a number of headlines which showed record cold and record snow in other parts of the world and questioned how could GLOBAL WARMING manifest itself as record high temps in Perth whilst simultaneously record cold and snow in other parts, this is illogical.

JB responded to this serious question with the usual jibber by giving me his “standard reply”, not a factual reply just his standard one. You then come barging in spitting, spraying and sprouting shit as usual but where is JB? He has run for the hills as usual leaving you here to defend his crap, well good for you MattB once a sucker always a sucker i say.

Now you asked for clarification of the questions i was asking ok fair enough so i clarified….TWICE…. and yet neither you nor your pathetic little friend have made any effort to answer them but yet you still come here sprouting shit.

So now onto your latest effort:

In response to my first question

1, List all IPCC negative feed backs to rising CO2 levels

You wrote

1) read the link I gave you dumbass

Well i read your link i have read it before but i did the right thing and read it again and for the life of me i cannot find anything in there (again) which states rising CO2 levels will have any negative effects on temp ie it will not cause more snow it is states is that CO2 is an amplifying force on temps.

So you simply need to answer my question with “None” but i doubt you actually read your own link you needed me to do that.

My second question

2, Explain how rising CO2 levels can cause a hot night in Perth whilst simultaneously cause record snowpack after all it is GLOBAL warming and not regional warming like the MWP.

Your response

2) I didn’t say rising CO2 levels have caused a 1 in 10 year snow event in the US. You did.

No i did not thats why i asked for you to explain it, if rising CO2 can only cause the temps to go up then how can we have the bitter winters we have had in the past decade, how can we have had the record snowfalls we have had in the past decade. Based on *your* preferred theory this is impossible so i asked *you* the question a question you have amateurishly tried to avoid.

My question 3

3, Explain why we need Kyoto to reduce emissions when nature provides us with a mechanism

Your response

3) what mechanism? You seem to be suggesting that a 1 in 10 year event, that lasts what a couple of weeks? has a significant impact on the total snow/ice coverage of the goddamn planet averaged over a year? DO you know how many km2 of new snow there is and how long it lasts, say compared to the low arctioc sea ice km2?

Exactly right, what is the mechanism that has defied your theory? And no it is not a 1 in 10 year event do not try and re write history leave that to the experts at GISS and the “team”.

My question 4

4, Explain why we need Kyoto when the USA can reduce emissions as a non signatory and without introducing a tax (no i did not forget even though you conveniently left it out in your response)

Your response

4) Because not every nation has access to the gas bonanza currently assisting the USA. The ability to reduce CO2 on the cheap is a great advantage to the USA for sure but it is not an argument against a global effort.

This response is quite strange because earlier you stated

Anyway to me the above graph shows that there was nothing to fear from Kyoto, and that fears of catastrophic damage tot he US economy from reducing emissions were a baseless scare campaign. It shows that the market driven price of carbon would have been pretty low.

Here you are advocating the acceptance of Kyoto based on the fact that the US has easily reduced its emissions through changing over to gas and the price of carbon would be so low it would hardly be felt, unfortunately for you the US did all this without signing Kyoto so your point here (whatever it is ) is moot.

But in your last response you appear to be saying that if you live in a country blessed with gas then you dont need Kyoto in any of its forms but still you should sign on to a kyoto type agreement but why? We could meet our targets by building new coal stations is this acceptable? Why dont we just exploit our gas, tear up kyoto, drop the carbon tax get rid of the permits (as that would drive up the cost of the cheap gas as you put it and let go of the pipe dreams this is after all what you are advocating is it not?

My question 5

5, Explain how rising CO2 levels can cause a hot night in Perth, increase Antarctic ice extent, reduce Arctic ice extent and at the same time produce record snow coverage in the USA.

Your response

5) The climate is a complex beast.

Ah yes the “i have no idea what i am talking about” response, did you clear that with Al Gore first?

You then make the most laughable statement

Yet again I answer all your questions (well the ones that make even the remotest amount of sense) clearly and openly.

Lets recap

1) No you did not answer, you posted a link to the IPCC i still do not know what your position on this question is

2) No you did not answer the question, you merely dodged and avoided it

3) You kind of answered i think you are saying that there is no mechanism

4) No you failed again

5) “Its complicated” is not answer

Another piss poor effort on your part MattB, i now understand the difference between you and JB, Jb is a loser of the highest order, he just hates people and is always looking for a fight so he comes here stirs the pot then leaves feeling good about himself. You on the other hand actually believe the crap that you write, you actually believe in this shit which is why you stated at the end of your comment

You got nothing. who knows AGW may well be a scam of the greatest proportions but you’ll still be texting warhogs for help at the next pub quiz night.

So even though i may be right and you maybe wrong you still feel the need to defend your faith.

What a load of tripe. Your questions are answred, you don’t like the answers, sorry there is nothing more I can do for you. I’m not going to repeat myself as it is already clearly stated and you’ll just disagree.

1) Link is clear I even quoted the specific line:
“The overall response of global climate to radiative forcing is complex due to a number of positive and negative feedbacks”
you appear upset that it does not have some massive feedback attributed to “showfall in America for a few weeks in winter” – which I note is only a 1 in 10 year2) event (your statement) so where is this feedback you refer to?

2) No one has ever said that every point on the globe will increase in temperature at the same rate, nor that some places may not get colder. It is not illogical therefore I can offer you no more. If you didn’t say the snow was caused by C02, and I didn’t say it, then why are you asking? Hot tip: you think it is a feeback of CO2 therefore you DID SAY IT!!!! That is what a feedback is by definition. A causes B.

3) “And no it is not a 1 in 10 year event do not try and re write history”
Your quote “This is hot off the press USA – Current snow cover most in 10 years”
Crickey Crackar is it or isn’t it a 1 in 10 year event make up your mind?
YOU are proposing that this snow event is somehow having a significant albedo effect not me.

4) My two responses are not in any way contradictory. The Kyoto protocal was opposed in the US on an idelogical basis, and also because they HAD NO IDEA they had all this fracking gas. Bully for them for reducing emissions, and they could have done this under Kyoto just the same the difference is there would have been a meaningful global effort rather than a random fluke.

5) My answer is completely acceptable. If you don’t understand the absolute basics that AGW will have different impacts at different times on different areas of the planet then so be it. If you don’t understand that weather will still happen then so be it.

Crackar just on your snow event… If you can find a data set that details how average daily snow coverage in the USA has changed over the years, and graph this against rising CO2, then maybe you could be on the way to determining if it is a negative feedback worthy of considering.

5, Explain how rising CO2 levels can cause a hot night in Perth, increase Antarctic ice extent, reduce Arctic ice extent and at the same time produce record snow coverage in the USA.

Your response

5) The climate is a complex beast.

This tells me that i am debating a religious person using faith based arguments whilst i am using logic, common sense and evidence and i have been around long enough to know that this will get me nowhere.

Your latest attempt at debating once again shows your incompetence in this area.

I asked clearly what do the IPCC believe are negative feed backs to rising CO2, for example they claim that WV will increase in the ATM (positive as this will give us the 4+C warming they bang on about), they also claim we will get less snow and less permafrost once again positive but they do not mention any negative feed backs. So i thought you would answer NO to this question which then sets the tone for the next but you are blinded by your faith and failed to comprehend the question therefore you failed to answer it.

The next question is an exercise in critical thinking (remember the question was based on what JB said) He claimed as often you have that a record high temp is proof positive of global warming therefore a cold record and or snow record is proof positive of what? Climate is a complex beast is not acceptable how can people like yourself claim a hot record is proof of AGW but then say a cold record is too complicated to explain. Once again your faith has clouded your judgment.

Next…..have you been living in a cave of late? The planet has seen many bitterly cold winters and record snow events for the past couple of years your ignorance of this fact further highlights the flaws in your religious beliefs.

Next….Kyoto is dead the sooner you accept the dream is over the better, accept the fact that government legislation to tell you how to think, when to think and what to think is not needed. We do not need a kyoto so why do we have one?????????????????? FFS Matt open your eyes.

Next…..And the last piece of crap “its a complex beast” OK lets say i am wrong here are a number of recent weather events caused by ????? Please tell me if AGW played a role.

Perth had a couple of hot days…AGw or not?

Alaska has seen temps lower by 2.4F over the past decade AGW or not?

Briton is experiencing floods AGW or not?

QLD floods AGW or not?

Record snowfall in Korea AGW or not?

Victorian bush fires AGW or not?

Finally no statistical global warming for 15 years AGW or not?

I could go on but this should be enough, now if it is too complex to answer one of these questions then it is too complex to answer all conversely if you answer one you must answer all……still your answer is acceptable?

So enough of your religious sprouting, believe in AGW if you want i do not care but do not push those beliefs onto me answer with facts and evidence or dont answer at all.

hmm you appear to have repeated yourself in hope I will give you a different answer to the perfectly acceptable one I’ve already given. At least that is what I can pick up between your rabid spittle.

AGW does not prevent the ability for there to be hot times and cold times. I’ve never said that AGW can prevent your 1 in 10 year snow event in the USA. I tend to NOT jump on random warm or cold events (which is what you are doing here). I tend to look at the GIS/HADCRUT/whatever global average temperatures.

I do NOT consider it fact that AGW will mean that nowhere will ever experience extreme cold, possibly even “record” cold. POssible mechanisms for this are changes in wind systems, ocean currents, who knows what else.

“Perth had a couple of hot days…AGw or not?” – well it had I think a statistically significant December heat wave, but as a stand alone not proof of AGW but possibly caused by AGW yes.

“Alaska has seen temps lower by 2.4F over the past decade AGW or not?” lower than what? I would need to be an expert in Alaskan weather to say yay or nay, but if it is occuring it is occuring.

“Victorian bush fires AGW or not?” SO many factors in bushfires but I have a feeling that yes these bush fires were aided by many years of low rainfall.

“Briton is experiencing floods AGW or not?” Britain has always experienced floods. these may or not be AGW related.

“QLD floods AGW or not?” Queensland has always experienced floods, just not with quite as many people living there. these may or may not be AGW directly related.

“Record snowfall in Korea AGW or not?” Don’t know. In my experience warmer cold can result in higher snowfall than colder cold. So there is no a-priori assumption that an AGW world is inconsistent with snow in Korea.

“Finally no statistical global warming for 15 years AGW or not” it would be hard for no warming to be associated with AGW… however I do not agree with the statement.

Look Cracker you can’t just shout and wave around meaningless weather events and claim you’ve won an argument that you are simply intellectually incapable of engaging in.

Korean snowfall caused by warmer cold as opposed to colder cold? Not sure what you mean here, but when it gets below 0C you get snow.

So you accept that no warming after 15 years means no AGW and therefore all of the above are not caused by AGW however you dont agree with the statement. You dont agree with all of the worlds leading authorities on the subject of temps, you dont agree with Travesty Trenberth, you dont agree with the sat data, the thermometer data, the radio sonde data and most probably the Argo data?

Well its been nice chatting with you MattB but i have more important things to do than attempt to dismantle your belief systems.

Crackar one thing that pissess of many skeptics is when a warmists shrills “Weather event X proves AGW or is cause by AGW”. That’s because it is bullshit. I’m not going to be written off because I choose not to make such statements. I may say “research suggests that this kind of weather event may become more/less frequent in the future due to AGW” but I’d need to research each type of event and the location of event to be able to say.

“When it gets below OC you get snow” – in my experience we used to get snow in Liverpool at say zero to minus 4C. Not so much when it was colder. This is because, I believe and I “could” be wrong, that the really cold weather came from a direction where the air was dry… and the “warmer” cold weather came from the ocean so would bring precipitation.

“After all, it only snows when it’s cold, so the colder it is, the snowier it must be. Right? Wrong. Arctic climates often get surprisingly little snow. Barrow, Alaska, for example, gets less snow than Chicago in an average year, despite having winters that average 39°F (22°C) colder.”

You are simply trying to fit black and white answers/conclusions where there are none, and then trying to pin my lack of ability to give you a black and white answer on my lack of understanding, or on my desire to avoid the question, rather than the reality that there is no straight up answer to some of your questions. That’s because they are crap questions, to be blunt.

This “we are changing the weather” comment of yours. I’ve said in an earlier comment that I suspected you probably weren’t a scientist and this statement is another example of why I suspect you are not. Do you mean weather or do you mean climate? If you mean weather are humans making it colder/warmer/wetter/drier/more cyclonic/less cyclonic? Do you really think that humans can change the weather which after all is a very short term entity? Remember Tim Flannery’s ill advised comments on drought in Australia? Recall how quickly the East coast was flooded. Which, of course, Flannery blamed on CAGW. Good having a scapegoat for every sort of weather isn’t it?Recall the UK Met Office’s blunders in forecasting weather. For example the “barbecue summer” forecast in 2009 which actually was a washout and their advice that there was only a one in seven chance of a cold winter in 2010/11 which was the coldest for 31 years. Now if you’d said humans were affecting the climate most would agree but if you asked how much you’d get a range of answers ranging from “probably not a lot” to “definitely, all climate change is human driven”, depending on the views of the particular respondent. Despite the new switch to the “extreme weather is due to climate change” meme, the evidence is that droughts and floods and hurricanes and blizzards are really not happening any more frequently than in earlier years despite the rather frantic claims of climate scientists t the contraryo

… the geographical distribution of that warming is extremely difficult to predict (other than saying it will be more at the poles) …

I’ve linked to these graphs before in response to similar comments apparently to no effect.
Both poles show no significantwarming trend over the instrumental record with the proviso that the jump in the Arctic temperature prior to 1920 is unaccountable and well before any human CO2 emissions could have been responsible.

Reason, JB?
The intuitive assumption is that globally-distributed, well-mixed CO2 would exert its influence evenly, after systematic large corrections as needed for latitude/dimming of sunlight type global effects.

There are many questions that could be asked about uneven effects attributed to GHG, but I have resolved mine to one question. I do not know the answer, so I ask it a few times a year.

In the tropics, if a cloud reduces sunlight to the ground, the near surface air at heights occupied by standing people is immediately and often strongly cooler under the cloud.

Question. Ask the same question near the North or South Pole. Is it warmer or hotter under cloud?

Perhaps it can be both, dependng on season. But can someone who has been there long enough please give me an answer? A good deal of deduction can follow from the answer.

Well Crakar does not matter if it is hot or cold wet or dry windy or calm its all climate change and the climate change is caused by AGW but here is the sticking point is that AGW caused by CO2 concentration in the atmosphere or not.

Mr Trenberth and Mr Fasullo say it is.

Mr Lindzen and Mr Choi say it is not.

Mr Gerlich and Mr Tscheuschner say there is no such thing as greenhouse effect in the first place.

Thats the warmbot response, i already got one of them i was hoping to stimulate a conversation about this but alas MattB amd JB and however else is lurking out there are too afraid to touch it barring the usual hand waving.

Might as well be debating the merits of the global v regional biblical flood.

An equation based on rational physics that, without considering any influence from CO2 whatsoever and using only one independent variable (the sunspot number), has calculated average global temperatures since they have been accurately measured world wide (about 1895) with an accuracy of 88% (R2 = 0.88, correlation coefficient = 0.938). Including the influence of CO2 (a second independent variable) increased the accuracy to 88.5%. This demonstrates that atmospheric CO2 has no significant influence on average global temperature.

When calibrated to measurements thru 1965 and using actual sunspot numbers, it predicted the average global temperature trend value in 2005 within 0.054°C. When calibrated thru 1995 and using actual sunspot numbers, it predicted the average global temperature trend value in 2011 within 0.004°C. The analysis includes the flat temperature trend of the last decade. The equation, links to the methodology and source data are at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true. No one else has used the time-integral of sunspots or been anywhere near this accurate.

The equation is valid as demonstrated by accurate calculation and prediction including the flat temperature trend since 2001. Results are shown in graphs. When calibrated through 2011 and using predicted sunspot data, the equation predicts an average global temperature downtrend for at least two more decades.

Great quote at the bottom of the article where a totally reality free, Guy Shrubsole, at Friends of the Earth says…

said of the WRI report: “This is a scary number of coal-fired plants being planned. It is clear that the vested interests of coal companies are driving this forward and that they will have to be reined in by governments.”

Guy Shrubsole completely disconnects that the Indian & Chinese Governments are not under Environmentalist control and don’t suffer the propaganda induced guilt complex for prosperity imposed by Environmentalists in the west. They want both prosperity and power and they are very serious about attaining both.

On the plus side – when Australia finally wakes up from the CAGW belief nightmare there will be plenty of companies around with solid expertise in Coal Fired power to help rebuild our own fleet of power plants.

I do note you ignore that places loike CAlifornia have pretty much operated as though they were Kyoto signatories for years.

Anyway to me the above graph shows that there was nothing to fear from Kyoto, and that fears of catastrophic damage tot he US economy from reducing emissions were a baseless scare campaign. It shows that the market driven price of carbon would have been pretty low.

It is important to accept that Kyoto/ETS whatever would have done nothing to deter what has happened in the USA, and could have even pushed htings along a bit better. The EVIDENCE is that the globe has been unable to follow, and it is clear that lack of a binding global agreement is the reason.

I do note you ignore that places loike CAlifornia have pretty much operated as though they were Kyoto signatories for years.

California are all but bankrupt

Anyway to me the above graph shows that there was nothing to fear from Kyoto, and that fears of catastrophic damage tot he US economy from reducing emissions were a baseless scare campaign. It shows that the market driven price of carbon would have been pretty low.

It shows nothing of the sort, it merely shows the US using an alternative to coal….Gas. Now before you get on your high horse MattB Gas is on the Greeny taboo list.

It is important to accept that Kyoto/ETS whatever would have done nothing to deter what has happened in the USA, and could have even pushed htings along a bit better. The EVIDENCE is that the globe has been unable to follow, and it is clear that lack of a binding global agreement is the reason.

No you are wrong again Kyoto failed because it was a useless treaty and no country could have ever meet its lofty idealistic dreams short of turning everything off unless of course we could design a nuclear fussion reactor or some such. Unfortunately we have wasted the better part of 20 years investing in pipe dreams.

I expected better from you Matt but alas you have shown us all once again what a true useless thinker you are.

Dont you people ever get tired of laying this game? You dance around the issue not willing to commit to anything too scared in case you get pinned down.

Ok lets play your game idiot.

You stated

Anyway to me the above graph shows that there was nothing to fear from Kyoto, and that fears of catastrophic damage tot he US economy from reducing emissions were a baseless scare campaign. It shows that the market driven price of carbon would have been pretty low.

The graph shows a reduction in US emissions because they used more gas, this has nothing i repeat NOTHING to do with Kyoto in fact the only morons that followed the Kyoto path (us) went away from Gas you imbecile and poured all our money into pipe dreams (wind mills, wave mills, solar etc).

Secondly the US has not applied stupid carbon taxes so how the hell could this graph show that “in the end there was nothing to fear from Kyoto” what kind of idiotic moron are you MattB? If anything this graphs shows us just how stupid, worthless and useless Kyoto was a fact tat you will continually fail to grasp.

Crackar a particular domestic economy’s response to Kyoto could well have been to adopt gas over coal. It is a part of Australia’s reponse too. Whether an economy chose to pursue other energy sources such as wind is entirely up to that economy/government. the US was a bit of a pioneer in wind.

California has a functioning ETS. It is the 10th largest economy in the world. I must have missed somthing but I thought signing Kyoto was an agreement to try to cut emissions, not to impose carbon taxes?

MattB, ExWarmist both – Have a good trip. Tip. The Australian 10 cents is the exact size and shape of a German mark coin and can be substituted in casinos, telephone booths, etc, to some gain, if you are of the experimental breed who believes that money is but a material measure of less tangible but more fundamentally important social advancement.
Get some German marks here and go to an Aussie casino to test this first as my info is 2 years old and might have changed. But be quick, because the mark is falling because they spent too much on windmills and might one day be traded for less than our 10 cents. Oh heck, why do I tell people these things for free when I could be really wealthy if I broke rules?

“but alas you have shown us all once again what a true useless thinker you are.”
It may concern me recieveing such feedback from someone who’s intellectual capacity was actually greater than a warthog.

A warthog???? you live in a bubble MattB you cannot even look at a graph and discern what the information is telling you, the US have lowered emissions even though they have never signed Kyoto and yet through some mystic reasoning that only you can fathom declare this as a Kyoto success…a warthog indeed lol.

Useful to remember that ethanol was a replacement for Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) that was a replacement for tetraethyl lead. Ethanol lowers the energy level when put in gasoline but taxes are still collected on the volume, not the distance. That amounts to a hidden tax.

Most reasonable people would not be troubled by a 10% tax. They may agree with the reasons it is imposed. Even 20% if it costs more to avoid it, but above 25% it is usually the case that the time spent avoiding (some of) the tax is less costly than earning that much extra.

Ron Paul may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but his suggestion of a 9% income tax, a 9% social welfare payment/tax and a 9% capital gains tax would leave the USA in a much better financial condition. For the Democrats to pretend that “taxing the rich” is the answer is as ludicrous as the Republicans insisting that 11 or 14% is as much as the country needs.

The problem is that the USA spends far too much of borrowed money because their politicians are incompetent, and unconcerned with their country or the general welfare. The same as our current lot.

When you get one lot of the public being taxed to provide benefits for another lot, there is bound to be resistance from the first. The reports about those rorting the system intensifies the antagonism, and overshadows those genuinely in need. The latter quite often lose out because they can’t work out the system. Instead of trying to be fair, the politicians and bureaucrats respond by introducing more rules, regulations and more bureaucrats, which increases the cost further. Our Health system is an example of the sort of mess that can be achieved.

But maybe the simpler method is to calculate the consumption tax necessary to balance the budget long term. So if it is 25% or 35% or 50% – just charge that and scrap all other taxes. Adjust benefits and pensions as necessary. Wages will find their own level. No tax returns. No accountants getting money for being better at fudging your tax. No more creating weird business structures to minimise tax.

Throughout British History, in politics, there has been a preponderance and a full complement of dorks, and docile political jerks, divs and lunatics. More replete we are now, Westminster is full of pompous idiots [we seem to have cornered the market!].
Prescott, this blockhead, is one of the all time clowns – how apt that his useless ‘baby’ is now dead in the water, satisfying or what?

If they want the job, they are generally unfit to do it.
Maybe govt will have to be like national service, if you are eligible to serve on a jury, you could suffer the fate of compulsory political service.
All bureaucrats automatically banned.

Ayn Rand 35 years ago, “Atlas Shrugged”, compulsory reading, exams next week.
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against – then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

The flaw in Dr. Ferris’s takers argument is that he needs the makers and the makers don’t need him. For him to have anything to take the makers must continue making. Interestingly, the makers won’t need to go on strike to stop the theft. Dr. Ferris’s kind of program will soon make it impossible for the makers to make. Shortly thereafter everything collapses. This has been the primary cause the downfall of nearly every civilization since the dawn of man. Ours is no exception.

The vote in the US Congress to avoid the so called cliff is simply one more step along the path of taking everything the makers have made, are making, and will make for nearly a century. It is unsustainable. No matter how many guns or enforced laws there are, one cannot consume that which has not been made. When all is consumed, there is nothing left to make more and the system collapses.

In other words, there is no such a thing as a free lunch. All lunches WILL be paid for – eventually. The only question is when and at what price?

Kyoto is dead, and there was never any justification for belief in AGW within the standards of the scientific method. AGW (human caused climate change) has never overcome the null hypothesis (a basic hypothesis test), that the warming is a natural fluctuation. Why does this matter? Let me explain.

A null hypothesis is a default position. To overcome (reject) the null hypothesis you have to show a certain statistical significance (or probability) that the evidence fits your hypothesis, better than the default position. We’re not talking about absolute proof, just probability.

Let’s use gravity as an example. The evidence that best fits the law (by a high probability) is that gravity is generated by mass. If you were to say that gravity used to be generated by mass but now it’s mostly people you had better be able to show a high probability, that the evidence fits your hypothesis, better than the current default position. If you didn’t you would be scoffed at.

However, human caused climate change has never done this, and the evidence fits the null hypothesis like a glove.
Why? Climate change is the norm, not the exception!
It always has and always will change.

By not rejecting the null hypothesis the human caused climate change hypothesis has never qualified as a theory. These people who play it as a fact are in fact in denial, of the scientific method!

However, the reverse is not true. The AGW hypothesis has indeed been rejected, by scientific analysis.

This paper recently published in a highly respected high impact journal has falsified AGW. The paper finds that the warming of the late 20th century was not related to anthropogenic forcing.

What does it mean?

Game over for the Alarmists.
If you believe in AGW, science is not on your side.

yup looks pretty warm. Thanks for linking to this comment btw… after your absurdist rant about snow in the US being incompatible with global warming:

“While 2012 was only the ninth warmest year globally, it was the warmest year on record for both the contiguous 48 U.S. states and for the continental U.S., including Alaska. For the U.S., 2012 started with one of the three warmest Januaries in the 34-year record, saw a record-setting March heat wave, and stayed warm enough for the rest of the year to set a record.”

Well isnt this interesting, we have 3 people here today that fervently believe in AGW but each one has a different method for establishing “the signs”.

We have Maxine who believes a hot day in Adelaide is a sign

We have you MattB that believes the warm continental US is a sign

And we have KR who accepts that there has been no significant warming but not for long enough so they are still looking for the sign.

I dont accept all 3 but i will take the time to listen to KR because at least they appear willing to listen to me, they are willing to accepr realities as they stand they do not reject current reality and replace it with their own.

As i said before Matt nice chatting with you but i think it is time i moved on as evidence will never trump religion.

I do not believe warm continental US is a sign. I was countering your ranting about how cold US winters have been and how much snow and surely all that snow is a negative feedback. A warm continental US IS A SIGN that you are wrong about how cold the US has been in terms of that showing there is no AGW. I also have a feeling that Maxing posted about hot Adelaide to trump claims that a heap of cold anomalies mean there is no AGW. I highly doubt she actually thinks that a warm day in Adelaide proves AGW, just counters absurd arguments from folks like you.

So sorry for the confusion you may want to change your password or ask the mods if a different IP address is accessing your name?

“I asked a question about negative feed backs and you never answered.”
yes I did

“I asked if all this snow cover would act as a negative feed back (snowiest decade for NH) and you never answered.”
yes I did (it would increase albedo… it may or may not be a feedback as nothing about the event appears to be linked to AGW it is just a 1 in 10 year weather event (your cite).

“Record snow cover in the US as we speak, hottest 2012 for US, which one is caused by AGW? they cant both be can they MattB???????? So which one?”
Yes they both could be caused by AGW. hottest US on record is certainly cosistent with AGW. Recoird snow cover may be I am not familiar with specific scientific opinions on the impact of AGW on winter weather patterns in the US.

No one can hac(k) my account MattB the same reason why i cant see comment numbers or go to half the links posted here.

But i digress, the snow cover in the US at the moment is the most in ten years, this has happened during the hottest year on record so we have hot extremes and cold/snow extremes in the one year and you claim both events are caused by AGW! Is there any better example of just how stupid you are?

That link that you sent me, you know the one which you claim answers my question regarding negative FB to rising CO2 levels states clearly that snow cover will REDUCE, no more comment on that from me i will let you wade around in the midst of confusion all by your self.

For the last time, this year is the snowiest in the US for 10 years, however the last decade has been the snowiest in the northern hemisphere. There is a difference but yet you still cannot comprehend what that is.

hottest US on record is certainly cosistent with AGW. Recoird snow cover may be I am not familiar with specific scientific opinions on the impact of AGW on winter weather patterns in the US.

Once again your comments show your stupidity, if you read your own link you would know that snow fall is supposed to decline just like the temps are supposed to go up.

Let me hone in on your problem:
“which one is caused by AGW? they cant both be can they MattB????????:

Um… yes they both could be.

We know that the NH has experienced the snowiest decade on record in defiance of the models, we know that if you increase snow levels we will get a greater albedo cooling the planet. You have just told me that AGW can cause an increase in snow fall (even though your link tells me different) ergo the increased snow fall must be a negative feed back to rising CO2 levels.

Would you agree with this statement? Yes or no will suffice.

So i ask again does the IPCC discuss negative feed backs to rising CO2 levels? Yes or no will suffice.

“You have just told me that AGW can cause an increase in snow fall (even though your link tells me different)”

Go on humour me… which link is that? There have been a few and I’m more than happy to have a look and learn about AGW related NH snow predictions. One of my links http://www.climate4you.com/SnowCover.htm shows NH snow cover is going nowhere. (remembering of course that less snow in summer is as important as more in winter… it is an annual average albedo that matters).

Again look at the the chart “NH snow cover since 1966″ and I as you where “We know that the NH has experienced the snowiest decade on record in defiance of the models” comes from. I look at the chart and your claim does not match.

Even if it WAS the snowiest decade on record (contradicted by evidence) then it is a big assumption to assume it is caused by increased CO2 levels.

“Lets also assume that increased snowfall would lead to some amount of increased albedo.”
Well it would, it is just the chart does not suggest there is increased snow coverage.

“Then logically the increase in snowfall is a negative FB to rising CO2 levels”
perhaps… but as it appears there is no increase in snow coverage in the NH it is a bit of a moot point.

Maybe you need to back up your “snowiest NH decade ever” in terms of anually averaged snow coverage in the NH, balanced of course with decreasing summer sea ice, to demonstrate that there is any such phenomenon of an increased albedo due to snow coverage taking place in the NH. (but of course globally would be what matters).

Crackar also CO2 does not make snow… my thoughts are that any such feedback would be driven by changes in temperature… which you say are not happening. So if it WAS a feedback and it WAS the snowiest decade in the NH (which it does not appear to be or at least you’ve not provided any evidence) then it means temps were rising.